The invention pertains to information technology and, more particularly, to content handling. It has application, by way of non-limiting example, in the routing of digital content, e.g., within and among enterprises.
To date, the routing and other handling of digital content, e.g., within and among enterprises, has been largely limited to electronic document distribution. That field has traditionally been long on promise, but short on delivery. The advent of each new electronic document technology has brought the hope of easy dissemination—not only between the document's original creator and recipient, but also among subsequent recipients inside and outside an enterprise. However, the degree to which this has been achieved in practice varies widely. On one end of the spectrum is e-mail, which is built on a protocol designed for distribution and redistribution and which serves both functions well. On the other end of the spectrum are word processing and scanner technologies, both originally intended for document creation, and both which often achieve distribution only through add-on or third-party solutions.
More recent activity in the art has been directed towards leveraging peer-to-peer networking and Web 2.0 technologies to distribute digital media content (e.g., movies, music, etc.), in addition to electronic documents. For example, iTunes distributes a variety of content including music, movies, television shows, etc., sourced by record companies, movie studios and other more traditional content providers, and YouTube provides a website for users to post and/or view streaming videos. While these are examples of recent digital media distribution systems, they do not address the typical requirements a user may expect from a content management system, e.g., customization and integration with an enterprise network.
Such is among the objects of the present invention. More generally, an object of the invention is to provide improved methods and apparatus for digital content handling.
A further object of the invention is to provide such methods and apparatus as are scalable and as provide the flexibility to support a range of user and enterprise needs.
A still further object of the invention is to provide such methods and apparatus as can be utilized in connection with data processing and other technologies—such as scanners, voice dictation systems, document capture and mark-up systems (e.g., those utilizing the Adobe PDF format) that are conventional in the marketplace.